Items removed from playlists when the video file is upgraded

[ptvir 3]

When a video file is upgraded (let's say from WEB 1080p to REMUX 1080p) the movie is removed from the playlists. I understand that it should be like this if I remove a movie from my library. However, this is a different case even though the original movie is effectively deleted. Would it be possible to code some logic that prevents this from happening?

 

[Abobader 3464]

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[noriandrice 0]

This happens with Collections too. I replace movies and they don't get added back into the Collection.

[Carlo 4561]

8 hours ago, noriandrice said:

This happens with Collections too. I replace movies and they don't get added back into the Collection.

These should get added back to the collections if you have import into collections turned on for your Movie library as Emby will pull the collection info from the meta-data provider when it finds the new movie.

Playlists are a different story because of how they work.

[Luke 42078]

Right, playlists are based on the raw paths to the media file, so if that changes, then it will have to be added back to the playlist.

[podonnell 47]

Just realized this as items have disappeared randomly. Is there a way I can at least see the broken links? Perhaps a database entry of what the lost favorite is? Or is the item completely wiped when it’s found missing?

[Luke 42078]

10 hours ago, podonnell said:

Just realized this as items have disappeared randomly. Is there a way I can at least see the broken links? Perhaps a database entry of what the lost favorite is? Or is the item completely wiped when it’s found missing?

Hi, can you please describe your question or issue in more detail? Thanks.

[podonnell 47]

5 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, can you please describe your question or issue in more detail? Thanks.

Hi,

What I'm hoping for is a way to determine when an item is removed this way. For example, if I have an item that I remove from Emby entirely, and then add back later. If it was a 'favorite' or in a Collection or Playlist, I'm understanding that it would be removed when the item is removed from Emby.

Are there any 'breadcrumbs' left that it was previously part of one of these lists?

Essentially, if I were to ever lose one of my hard drives and need to re-add items, I would want to know they were originally a part of one of these lists, even if I had to pull it from the database.

[Luke 42078]

No, things get cleaned up, although if you had a backup of your old database you could potentially run queries on it.

[podonnell 47]

Damn. Yeah, it sounds like there's a need to keep extra track of this stuff then. So even if someone had say a library they store on a removable device. If that device goes offline once, and comes back online, all of the playlists, collections, etc.. That data is just destroyed? It doesn't hold it to try and relink?

[Luke 42078]

No, when that kind of error is detected, the server won't remove the library contents.

[Luke 42078]

But that's not the same as just a single file that's no longer there.

[podonnell 47]

Ah okay, good to know the distinction. Where's the line on that one? Is it actually if it detects that a hard drive is offline? In a drivepool scenario, there could be just a handful of folders that disappear, is that covered?

It seems like the gap is if something is manually replaced or has a filename changed?

I just want to protect my metadata and would not want to see collection, playlist, or favorites lost. It sounds like that can happen in certain scenarios, so I might want to script something out to alert me if something is ever removed.

[Lessaj 467]

It should be configured in such a way that the folder used for a library is completely unavailable vs empty in order to preserve the contents.

For example my storage array mounts to /mnt/raid, and one of my folders is /mnt/raid/Storage/Movies. If /mnt/raid isn't mounted at all, there is no /mnt/raid/Storage/Movies folder - it detects that the folder is unavailable (and logs it as such), and does not adjust any library content. Whereas if /mnt/raid/Storage/Movies existed, but was empty, it would detect that as a change and remove the items under that folder.

[podonnell 47]

So that makes me worried for a drive failure scenario using a drive pool. Say I have a pool at /Movies/ and am not using redundancy. And say it has 3 drives each holding 33% of the content in /Movies/

If one of the drives goes offline, Emby sees that /Movies/ still exists, but 33% of the content doesn't, so those are all deleted from the library.

I understand Emby would have to mark these files as deleted in this case, as it is not any different than me deciding to manually delete 33% of my content.
For me, a lot of media I host can be easily recreated. So I don't want to make it redundant to save disk space.

However, if that scenario comes up, and I do recreate the media, titles that users had marked as favorites and in playlists would be purged. I want to preserve that.

Another scenario is if I decide to move an item from one library to another, those meta-lists they belong to would be lost.

It seems like the way Emby stores 'watched' status for a title is different though? Guessing that is linked to a tmdb ID or something? And we can't rely on that for all titles since we could have things like home videos that don't have tmdb IDs.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Favorites shouldn't be an issue due to how they are tracked unless they have no providerids, but playlists until Emby actually preserves the playlist and just throws warning/errors the playlist gets purged when the server no longer sees the content.

So everything without providerids will lose watched/resume/favorite status if go missing/removed and readded as they will have a new database id with no other way to track.  Path really can't be uses as users move media around all the time.

But there are a couple topic on playlists being purged.

[Luke 42078]

3 hours ago, podonnell said:

Ah okay, good to know the distinction. Where's the line on that one? Is it actually if it detects that a hard drive is offline? In a drivepool scenario, there could be just a handful of folders that disappear, is that covered?

It seems like the gap is if something is manually replaced or has a filename changed?

I just want to protect my metadata and would not want to see collection, playlist, or favorites lost. It sounds like that can happen in certain scenarios, so I might want to script something out to alert me if something is ever removed.

It depends on how the dotnet runtime sees the unavailable status. If it throws an error when trying to fetch directory contents, then this is ideal as Emby Server will catch that error and act accordingly.

But if it just sees it as an available (but empty) folder, then it will look like deleted content.

[podonnell 47]

1 hour ago, Happy2Play said:

Favorites shouldn't be an issue due to how they are tracked unless they have no providerids, but playlists until Emby actually preserves the playlist and just throws warning/errors the playlist gets purged when the server no longer sees the content.

So everything without providerids will lose watched/resume/favorite status if go missing/removed and readded as they will have a new database id with no other way to track.  Path really can't be uses as users move media around all the time.

But there are a couple topic on playlists being purged.

I wager playlists and collections are in the same boat? I tested re-uploading an item and it kept the watched status, but it was removed from a collection I had it a part of.

If user's favorites are not touched, that makes me more comfortable. Though, I'll have to see which content is missing a provider ID.

[Luke 42078]

Depends on whether the movie has an nfo file because that can hold the collection info.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Yes collections will depend on if you write nfo files as the <set> node records the collection the item belongs to.  If you don't write nfo files then yes the collection info could be lost as the entire db item is purged.

 

[podonnell 47]

Ooh that's excellent, so writing .nfo files preserves Collections that they belong to?

What about individual user playlists? I would be surprised to hear that gets written to the NFO

Edit: Did some testing...

1) Deleting items from the drive directly and then re-adding them does preserve collection and favorites status. However the item is lost from any playlists it belonged to.

2) Deleting items from Emby directly purges the image file and .nfo file in the same directory. However, you are only warned that the video file will be deleted. Surprisingly, the favorite status is restored, but the collection information is lost. So I would imagine favorites have links to provider IDs, and those are not wiped when an item is removed. But collection info is indeed stored in the .nfo files

One thing that remains, when you rename your files, do .NFO files know to adjust? If I removed a file from my library and added it back, it could be matched by filename to a metadata provider, but my custom NFO data would only be preserved if the .NFO file finds the exact match. Is that right?

Edited April 15, 2025 by podonnell

[Luke 42078]

Quote

One thing that remains, when you rename your files, do .NFO files know to adjust? If I removed a file from my library and added it back, it could be matched by filename to a metadata provider, but my custom NFO data would only be preserved if the .NFO file finds the exact match. Is that right?

If you rename a video file you'll want to make sure to also rename the nfo file.

[podonnell 47]

If I rename a movie file only, do I also lose the images I chose for the item? Those are matched on file name too? I do have them saving to disk.

And what else is lost with the NFO? Nothing about cast picture changes, but just general metadata I've changed?

[podonnell 47]

Also, .NFO files are an additional backup of the information, is that right? Normally the metadata would be stored with the DB, but in case of DB corruption, NFO files are there to help rebuild?

But not using .NFO files doesn't remove the data from the DB, it's just an extra backup?

[Luke 42078]

22 hours ago, podonnell said:

If I rename a movie file only, do I also lose the images I chose for the item? Those are matched on file name too? I do have them saving to disk.

 

Possibly. It just depends on where the image is and what the new and old file names are of both the media and the image.